Chapter 3: They're Really Looking Forward to Your Arrival

Monday only had morning classes, so the entire afternoon was free time.

Zhu Rong turned down his classmates' invitation to an escape room, ordered a standard meal through the comms system, wolfed it down in a few bites, and logged into the game without delay.

Today was October 1st.

September's account data had finished being tallied, and his effort points from last month were enough to apply for a small guild.

Although a small guild offered few benefits, as someone who had never made friends in a full-dive game before, Zhu Rong was especially looking forward to joining one.

He browsed the guild rankings.

Required level fifteen... top fifty in the city arena rankings.

Level twenty, top ten in the city arena.

...

He flipped through more than ten pages of the rankings. Big or small, every guild had arena requirements.

Zhu Rong had never forged weapons or equipment. His chosen race, the incubus, had no talent for combat either. His only charm skill required intimacy with other players to gain skill enhancement effects.

So he couldn't win in the arena.

"Ah..."

Zhu Rong's expectations fell flat.

He closed the guild directory and hesitated over the map for a moment.

Well, it was what it was.

He'd just find a hill and dig up some plants first.

Zhu Rong's map exploration wasn't high, less than a tenth. There was only a small plain in the middle, some resource-poor hills, and the one place with a danger rating of one star: Boli Lake.

Yesterday, he had been picking flowers by Boli Lake when a black dragon burst out of the water and scared him so badly he let loose his charm skill.

And that led to the disaster between him and Jingzhe.

No, no, no.

Zhu Rong shook his head.

He was going to mark Boli Lake as a forbidden zone, never to set foot in it again for the rest of his life.

Right after that, Zhu Rong selected the teleport point on the central plain, took his shovel and little basket, and teleported straight back.

A wave of dizziness hit, and Zhu Rong landed.

The light was so bright...

Zhu Rong rubbed his eyes and looked up into a pair of pale purple pupils, with a golden cross at the center of each.

This was a dream-eating serpent, a rare species only available to the earliest batch of players at character creation. In the entire Otherworld Judgment official server, there were no more than ten dream-eating serpent accounts.

"Hey there, little incubus." The dream-eating serpent flicked its tongue and reached out a sharp claw to touch his face. "Nice face sculpt. There's no way Jingzhe could be charmed by a low-level incubus like you. Must be the face, right?"

!!!

Zhu Rong went rigid all over.

That tone... that way of speaking.

Such strong main-wife energy...

Damn Jingzhe had a wife and still bullied a little incubus like him?!?!?!

Zhu Rong's mind raced, and he hesitated for a second.

"We're just fuck buddies! It's already completely over, big sister."

"?" The dream-eating serpent froze for a second, then smiled sweetly. "So that's what you two were?"

Zhu Rong carefully poked his head forward. "What did he say we were?"

The dream-eating serpent straightened up and lightly wiped her fingertips. "Strangers."

"..."

He'd spoken too soon.

Zhu Rong quickly corrected himself. "Okay, actually we really are strangers... but is there something you need from me?"

The dream-eating serpent reached out and pulled him up, and the two of them walked under a large golden fruit tree.

"Polar Light guild. Have you heard of it?"

Zhu Rong nodded quickly.

The current second-ranked guild. Even a small player like him had heard of it.

"I'm the guild master of Polar Light. My name is Dorothea." Dorothea wore a smile, the cross in her pupils flickering with light from time to time. "The one you slept with yesterday... oh, sorry, the one you bound a contract with, Jingzhe, is in our guild."

Well, he was screwed.

Zhu Rong swallowed.

If Jingzhe was the most capable employee in a corporation, then Dorothea was the boss of that corporation.

Yesterday, he had single-handedly made the corporation's biggest workhorse lose his ability to work. As the boss, she naturally couldn't stand by and had decided to remove the obstacle hindering the entire corporation's progress.

So Dorothea had now appeared before him.

"You... aren't you also here to make me delete my account?" Zhu Rong asked in a low voice.

"Huh?"

Dorothea touched her lips. "Why would I make you delete your account?"

"Jingzhe said the contract binding can only end if I delete my account." Zhu Rong lifted his eyes, looking a little dejected.

"What the hell does he know."

Dorothea was thoroughly unimpressed. "That foul-tempered dead dragon should've been taken down a peg ages ago. He throws his bull-headed tantrums around the guild all day. Now that he's got a baby lock bound to him, he's finally a bit more manageable."

"...?"

Zhu Rong was completely confused.

"Here's the thing." Dorothea smiled. "Although no one saw your passionate process yesterday, his account status was always public. Right after the binding yesterday, he immediately set it to private, but plenty of guilds still noticed. So right now, there are probably a lot of people watching your account."

"?"

Zhu Rong was at a loss. "I'm just a level 12 incubus... why would anyone watch me?"

"Your account level is indeed a bit low, but Jingzhe's account is the number one on the Otherworld Judgment official server."

Zhu Rong paused, then understood.

Otherworld Judgment was now a household-name game. The value of Jingzhe's account probably couldn't be measured in money.

Dorothea continued:

"They don't want Jingzhe's account to keep leveling. They just need to control your account. But your account is your asset, after all, so we can't exactly tell you to delete it."

Dorothea ruffled the white hair on top of his head and looked at him with a smile.

"So for the guild's interests, I hope you'll join Polar Light."

"Join Polar Light?"

Zhu Rong was too shocked to speak.

The guilds he'd been looking at earlier were all small ones ranked in the thousands. He hadn't even dared glance twice at the high-ranked guilds on the first page.

This wasn't pie falling from the sky. This was gold falling from the sky.

Zhu Rong couldn't hold back his excitement, but also felt a little lost. "I'm only level 12, and I can't win in the arena..."

"That's fine." Dorothea shook her head. "I have other people for the arena. You can just be the mascot."

Zhu Rong's throat bobbed as he seemed to weigh the pros and cons of her words.

Joining Polar Light had many benefits. He'd get one extra guild quest every day. Big guilds like this had very generous quest rewards, plus a daily check-in bonus of three hundred experience points and fifty dimensional coins.

Fifty a day meant he could buy a pack of rare aquatic plant seeds every two days.

As for the downsides...

Zhu Rong thought about it.

The only downside was having to run into that bad-tempered black dragon from time to time.

Clearly, the pros far outweighed the cons.

Zhu Rong looked up at Dorothea. "If I join Polar Light, do I really only have to be the mascot? No other work?"

Dorothea thought for a moment. "What can you do?"

"Growing flowers and vegetables, building houses, gathering materials, making potions. I can do all of that."

As Zhu Rong listed them off, the heart-shaped tail behind him wagged rapidly.

"That's pretty good." Dorothea's smile narrowed her eyes. "Come back to the guild with me first. I'll get you registered, and you can meet everyone in the guild while you're at it."

"They're very much looking forward to your arrival."